Generation of reform

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generations of reform. Hence, a short introductory note on those concepts will be provided at the beginning of this part.

1.1.1. Generation of reform

The concept generation of reform suggests that military reform does not take place in one sequence. Instead, it takes place as a long process with several phases. It is basically in line with the idea of military reform as viewed by the concept civil-military relations. This concept resembles the idea of dynamics. It means that the relationship between civilian and military takes place continuously in which in some period the civilian is taking the lead and in other period the vice versa. In Indonesia, this is commonly referred as tarik-ulur (push-and-pull). Those who disagree with this understanding proposes the idea of generation as step-by-step conducts in reforming the armed forces to follow democratic governance.

Cottey, Edmunds and Forster (2002) introduced the concept of generation of reform to tackle the usual stall in establishing democratic control over the armed forces.

The main problem with military reform is basically laying in the second rather than the first generation in which the first generation is only focusing on “reforming core institutions for political control of the armed forces” while the second generation focuses on “establishing effective structures for the democratic governance of the defense and security sectors” (Cottey, Edmunds & Forster, 2002, 32). The main problem with the reform is laying at the second rather than the first generation of reform.

This division between the first and second generations of reform is relatively similar to those who argue that there are basically two phases of reform with the first focuses on structural arrangement while the second deals with the behavioral aspect of the main idea of reform—in this case democratic governance (Wibisono, Wardoyo &

Kasim, 2008; Widjajanto, et.al, 2008). According to this understanding—which can be considered as the second school of generational reform to distinguish it from the first school above, the first phase of reform is basically an attempt to disengage the armed forces from politics while the second phase is aiming at professonalizing the armed forces. Hence, this understanding differentiates the complete reform into the phase of military reform and the phase of defense transformation.

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Following this logic, an identification of what constitutes the agendas of the first and second phases should be made. Following the logic developed by Cottey, Edmunds and Forster (2002), Mietzner (2006) identified that the first generation is more focusing on “dismantling of old power structures” (p. 3). Hence, in the first generation of the reform, the activities are basically creating structural arrangements to place the armed forces under democratic control. Hence, agendas such as the subordination of the armed forces under the civilian-in-nature Ministerial oversighting is among one of the most important steps to be taken to curtail military’s autonomy. Cottey, Edmunds and Forster (2002) suggested that this phase should not only be limited to placing the armed forces under executive oversighting but also legislative and even judiciary oversighting. The establishment of these structures, however, requires agendas to strengthen their institutional capacity which are the focus of the second generation.

The first and second generations of reform within that logic, however, fall within the agendas of the first phase according the latter school. The idea of military reform according to the second school is both covering the establishment of the structure to ensure democratic governance over the armed forces—and defense affairs—and strengthening their capacities. The establishment and strengthening of this arrangement, however, should also be targeted at those who sit within this arrangement. It means that the establishment and strengthening of this arrangement should be followed by the establishment and strengthening of the human resources who organize and run this arrangement. Simply put, the second phase according to this second school means that there must be a change in attitude within both civilian and military to uphold the principle of democratic governing. In some cases, this attitude-making are targeted at the armed forces or defense establishment instead of civilian. One of the argument that support this approach is because military’s involvement in politics does not take place only because the opportunity to intervene but also because the desire to intervene.

However, in the case of Indonesia, this attitude-making within civilian is equally important as that within the armed forces.

As will further discussed in the next part, the military reform in Indonesia, especially during the early period of reform, resulted in a civil-military fusion in which groups of civilians were creating alliance with groups within the armed forces while other groups of civilian created alliance with other groups within the armed forces. The

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main problem lies in the intra-civilian rivalry in which some of the groups within civilian camp thought that they needed to make an alliance with military officers to strengthen their political position due to various reasons.³ Hence, in the context of Indonesia, the second phase of reform usually refers to the establishment of the

“military mind” or military professionalism. This understanding is best captured in the concept of defense transformation.

The idea of defense transformation, or can be referred as military transformation, basically represents the idea of changing the nature of the soldier to be prepared for war. It is in line with Huntington’s (1957) of increasing the expertise of the soldier. Identification of what constitutes defense or military transformation can be challenging due to its paradoxical nature (Stulberg & Salomone, 2007). One of these main paradoxes is the fact that military transformation requires constant change while it also means abandoning previous established practices and hence the desire for change can be unattractive. In addition, there is another question of what should be changed.

Hence, Sloan (2008) proposed various focuses of change or transformation ranging from technological-led transformation, doctrinal-led transformation, structural-led transformation, to threat-led transformation (see also Mandeles, 2007; Stulberg &

Salomone, 2007). The dominant key point in defense transformation is basically technology, which brought scholars to invest on revolution to military affairs. Loo (in Loo, 2009), however, warned that there is a stark difference between great and small powers in their attitude to and conduct of transformation when technology is the key driver.

In the case of Indonesia, the concept defense transformation basically means to modernization of the armed forces. To be more precise, this modernization means to fulfill the minimum requirement of defense. In the words of Tan (2004) and Bitzinger (2010), Indonesia, as well as other Southeast Asian countries, was involved in maintenance stage of their defense capabilities instead of heading into arm race with one another. This transformation would require military officers and soldiers to focus on increasing their skills in managing violence which would—hopefully—divert their

3 One of these reasons was because support from military officers would be equal with protection to this group of civilians. In addition, the support from military officers would also provide politicians with support from general public as the figure of military officers remained important for general public, especially in rural area (Prasetyono, 2017, interview).

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attention from politics. Hence, the idea defense transformation in the context of Indonesia is extremely limited to modernization as a mean to diverting TNI’s attention from politics. With such an understanding, military reform in Indonesia basically can be differentiated into two different phases with two different focuses and agendas. During the early period of the reform, the main focus is on disengaging TNI from politics while in the second phase, the main focus is to professionalize TNI.